Speak, Dogs. Speak!An Oral History ofGo, Dog. Go!

The Romance

BLUEDOG: Everyone I knew had a thing for Pink Dog. Everyone except Yellow Dog, I mean. That was one cool cat, if you’ll forgive the expression.

YELLOWDOG: I had a steady job going up and down in a bucket. I was in a bowling league. I was a member of the Yo-Yo Fanciers. I also judged amateur haberdashery contests. So I was much too busy for chasing tail. And I was determined not to look as poor as I really was.

PINKDOG: He had this ridiculous cane and bowler… I think it was one of those boy-bites-girl’s-ears type courtships. We’d meet up in some random place, I’d try to start a conversation, and he’d rain on my parade. One time he literally stole the feather out of my cap!

YELLOWDOG: It’s not just that the hats were ugly: the construction was shoddy, the materials were complete—pardon my French—dog crap… she had the worst taste in hats. Still does.

PINKDOG: He doesn’t complain about my taste in lingerie.

Work and Play

BADYELLOWDOG: What most people don’t realize is that Bad Red and I weren’t breaking rocks because we enjoyed that sort of thing. We were on a leash gang, so to speak.

BADREDDOG: Bad Yellow and I had been busted for knocking over a liquor store. We got sent up to the Big Dog House for a nickel, and while we were there we did hard labor during the day and played baseball in the kenneltentiary league in the evenings.

BADYELLOWDOG: Blue Dog looks like he’s shoveling, but he’s really just posing. Blue was a guard. That’s why he was the ump. I played catcher; I was always good at playing catch.

BADREDDOG: Working that jackhammer took its toll on my hearing. When I was at bat, I couldn’t hear Blue’s calls. More than once I took off for first base on a foul ball, only to have Bad Yellow yell, “Stay!”

BADYELLOWDOG: Bad Red and I did our best to keep our noses clean while in the pen. No begging for scraps, no barking back… and it paid off. We got released early for good behavior, and we were able to make it to the Big Dog Party in the tree. Man, that was a blast.

BADREDDOG: Soon after that we got collared for selling fake licenses to underage pups, though.

BLUEDOG: I’m afraid I can’t comment on anything that happened at Fang Fang. But the records of Bad Yellow Dog and Bad Red Dog speak for themselves.

The Economy

REDDOG: Good jobs were hard to come by.

MALEPINKDOG: I worked as a Zeppelin pilot.

REDDOG: I operated a Ferris wheel.

MALEPINKDOG: Every morning, I’d take the blimp out of the hangar and start my tour of the city. And every day, without fail, some privileged rascal pups would be up on top playing racquetball!

GREENDOG: I got a job doing security for this eccentric Yellow dog, flying a helicopter over his estate. I was surprised that he gave me the job, but fortunately there was no drug test. The route covered one square quarter mile, which pretty much included one tree, and one hammock.

MALEPINKDOG: The noise of that racquetball pinging around on the rubber still echoes in my brain. I’ve been on disability ever since, thanks to my nerves.

GREENDOG: It was a much better job than the pulley assembly. I mean, how many times can you go up and down in an eight-hour day? That’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly how many times.

REDDOG: “Go around again!” they’d call, every time. “Buy another ticket, tightwad!” I’d yell back, as I jammed on the brake.

The Red (Dog) Scare

BIGREDDOG #1: In 1961 there was plenty of distrust in the community, probably because we animals were first getting around to reading that Orwell book. You know the one I mean.

BIGREDDOG #2: If we looked hunted coming out of that hedge maze, it’s because we were being hunted. That Blue Poodle was following us, watching our every move, just waiting for us to do something even vaguely Communist.

BIGREDDOG #3: There was a saying in our community: “Red Rover, Red Rover, the Cold War’s not over.” Also, “Better fed than dead,” although I’ve never been sure that that had anything to do with the political climate of the time.

BIGREDDOG #1: Even though we’d made it to the end of the maze, and that Blue Poodle informant was first going in, Big Red #3 got spooked and turned around. He hid in the maze for a while, which is why he wasn’t with us at the park.

BIGREDDOG #2: Wouldn’t you know that we’d get to an amusement park and there’d be another little blue dog already waiting for us? He was literally two steps ahead of us, though. That’s why we were behind him on the roller coaster.

BIGREDDOG #3: I caught up with my pals later, at the seaside. We went swimming in the ocean, but I’ll be a Maltese’s uncle if there wasn’t a blue dog there, on the roof of a house on the beach, watching us through a telescope. I think he was hoping we’d start swimming toward Cuba.

BIGREDDOG #4: Not long after that, I picked up the others in my makeshift boat and actually did manage to convince them to go with me to Cuba.

BIGREDDOG #1: We weren’t at the Big Dog Party in the tree.

BIGREDDOG #2: We heard it was a blast, though.

BIGREDDOG #3: I’ve smelled Fido Castro’s behind.

The Sleepover

WHITEDOG: It wasn’t a love-in or anything like that. It was just a twenty-dog sleepover for my birthday. Good, clean fun. Everyone in—and under—that giant bed just slept through the night.

LITTLEBLUEDOG: Not me. I couldn’t get to sleep. I think I was too excited about something I’d buried in the yard earlier. I finally wound up sleeping when the rest of them got up and left. So, yeah, I missed the big dog party. Was it fun?

The Party

GREENDOG: Oh man, the party! Everyone is always asking about the Big Dog Party. What a party!

BLUEDOG: What a dog party!

GREENDOG: Like, what was the deal? How’d we all end up in that tree?

YELLOWDOG: The tree! The tree!

GREENDOG: Back in ’58, I met that guy, Little Green Dog. He was promoting different kennel clubs at the time.

BLUEDOG: I think he did that boat party, too.

REDDOG: “A Banjo, a Lollipop, Checkers, and Thou.” That was the theme.

YELLOWDOG: Little Green Dog was running clubs in Switzerland in the sixties. And that’s where I saw Pink Dog for the third time.

PINKDOG: The ski hat!

YELLOWDOG: I did not like that hat.

PINKDOG: I paid 400 francs for the hat.

GREENDOG: LGD heard about the tree from one of his security watch dogs.

LITTLEREDDOG: That Blue Bulldog Bouncer guy; if you knew him, you were in.

YELLOWDOG: And word spread pretty fast about the party in the tree.

LITTLEGREENDOG: Black dogs and white dogs, big dogs and little dogs…

BLUEDOG: Gah! The traffic! It was like there was only one road to get there. You had cars lined up for miles and miles.

YELLOWDOG: Who puts a light in the middle of a highway?!

BLUEDOG: One doggone light in the whole doggone town.

GREENDOG: I thought I was making really good time until everything ground to a screeching halt. To this day, I have no idea why.

YELLOWDOG: Some little lost bird wandered across the road, looking for its mother.

BLUEDOG: Like if one dog says no, and another dog says no, there could still be ONEDOGSOMEWHERE that might be a bird’s mother!

YELLOWDOG: I had to work triple overtime on the bucket-pulley to be able to afford a rental car back then.

PINKDOG: I took every trinket, knickknack, gewgaw, doodad, chew toy, rubber spider, pinwheel, squeaky bone, flag, and actual goldfish I could find and attached them to a wicker basket. And that was the hat you finally liked!